Ugh you guys look at our downstairs bathroom. Green and yellow tile, bright yellow walls, ‘antiqued’ dark greenish trim.

From inside the bathroom, look at this gross door! This bathroom is like 4×4, so hard to take photos of. There used to be wallpaper in there with sunflowers. I took it down a while ago.

Then I had a day off and finally got so sick of looking at this stupid bathroom. I decided to paint it while Alex was at work for a surprise.

I used the paint from the dining room (light light yellow) and white for the trim. It was fast and came out great!

Its so much cleaner and now I even like the tile a little bit.

Then I put a rug in and hung up pictures and put a plant in there. Yay! Soon we have to put in a new floor because this one is stupid.

Then I had Alex put up the sweet little heart cabinet that was there before we moved in. I feel so much better about that stupid bathroom now!!!!

Today was 75 degrees. In Connecticut. In March. The mosquitoes are out. Ugh.

Look at all the spring flowers!

I’ve been digging. Remember last year when I let everything go wild to see what would come up? This year I’m digging stuff up to plant things. Like here, where I am going to plant herbs. This is the side of the house near where the porch comes out, right near the kitchen. It’s a bigger space than it looks. The plants I left here are lambs ear which I thought would fit in with my herbs.

Here is a picture of my majestic hot dog, Puff. She is a great yard work helper.

Unlike my non-helpful majestic puppy, Fritz.

See how un-helpful?

Last summer Alex and I bought an invisible fence on Amazon.com and installed it ourselves. By ‘installed it ourselves’ I mean used lawn staples to attach the fencing to the ground around the edge of the yard because come on, who wants to dig a trench around a half acre? No thanks. Puff trained herself in about one minute, and we’ve been training Fritz since he was about 6 months old (now hes 7 1/2 months). The great news is that he is fully, totally trained on the fence, but the bad news is that he NEVER wants to come back in the house. The jerk.

I’ve also cleared out (mostly) this front garden area. I need to trim the forsythia a little more, I hacked off about 8 feet in height earlier (in the fall).

I forget what this stuff is called, the ground cover stuff that had overtaken this bed (and all the other ones) but my mom knows. I like it because it’s super easy to pull up. I just rolled this junk up. Easy easy.

This took maybe fifteen minutes. I’m very strong. I found all those bricks. I am going to plant beautiful flowers here. I  don’t know what kind. My mom is going to help!! I only know about growing tomatoes and only a little bit. And house plants I guess.

Up next! The dresser I sanded and stained but probably should have painted. Stay tuned!

Do you know who Charley Harper is? He’s this great artist from Cincinnati who did these awesome posters in the 80s and 90s for the National Parks service.  My sister is a smarty and figured out you can buy these awesome, giant posters (they’re 29×39!) from the government for $10-20. I ordered a bunch, and will rotate them out when I get bored of looking at them. Like I ever will. Look how great these are!!

I hung up this Canyon Country one at the top of the stairs, apparently very crookedly. Don’t worry, it’s just temporary until I get a frame. Plus, ugh, look what a gross color the walls and floor are. Ew!

Anyway you guys, buy yourselves some of these sweet posters while the government still has them! Go here and search for ‘harper’ or you can do a more extensive internet search and then search for the names of the posters, they’re all there.

Hi! Look at our gross half bathroom. Alex decided to replace the faucet to make this sink look better. We bought a cheap new faucet at Home Depot. He installed it eventually after a lot of cursing and yelling. Look how good it looks now! Oh I forgot to mention the old faucet was leaking, so we had to turn the hot water off which made washing your hands cold. Now it’s all fixed and new and not leaking.

Then upstairs I started taking down the rest of the wallpaper. Oh man. The wallpaper upstairs in the guest room was painted over. It looks terrible.

This is a terrible terrible project. I worked for six hours straight and only got about three feet done. Hopefully when it’s done it’ll look beautiful, but that might be a while. Ugh.

That’s all the news! See ya!

Oh, and this guy got neutered. Yay!

Remember this great mirror that I got from my dad over the summer? A few months ago I found a copy at Goodwill. I already have one that’s special, but I just couldn’t resist.

They’re not exactly identical, but pretty close. The new one is a bit larger, or else I’d put them next to each other in the bedroom. Instead, I left the special one down stairs and brought the new one upstairs and hung it in the bedroom. Yay! And yes, that is a piece of tape on the corner, it needs to be fixed a little so right now it has some tape.

Next up is this great taco menu print. Just kidding! It’s really then menu from my favorite favorite taco place, Taco Loco in Philly. They serve the best tacos I’ve ever had out of an RV that’s parked on the corner of 4th and Washington in South Philly.

We were there a week or so ago, and I brought home a menu. After I looked at it I decided it was perfect and beautiful, especially since they printed a hard shell taco and then crossed it out and wrote ‘we only serve soft tacos’. It’s perfect. I can’t wait until we redo the kitchen and it has a permanent home.

Best yet, I got these amazing English setter prints for Christmas from my mom. They’ve been in our  family for years, but now that we have an English Setter, they’re appropriate/perfect.

Speaking of English Setters, here is ours all foamy and wet in Philly. He gets carsick.

Yay!

Happy New Year! We had a great holiday season and new year here, and it’s totally time for an update. Here are some things that have happened:

First, we moved the plants from the porch into the house for the winter. It hasn’t snowed since that weird freak storm we had back in October, but it’s still been cold. Next, we got a new TV! It’s nice and flat and has the internet on it, Alex is so happy. We donated the old one. Third, I got a sewing machine for Christmas from Alex and am making a lazy person quilt:

Fourth, check out the sweet Eames rocker my dad Santa got us for Christmas:

From another angle:

Also note the funny bunny lamp behind, a gift from my step-grandparents.

In other news, the puppy is getting huge! He was 6 pounds when we got him (when he was 10 weeks old) and now he is 23 pounds at 21 weeks. He is almost as tall as Puff, is almost completely house trained, and a really good little guy. I sure am glad we have him!

And don’t worry, Puff is getting along with him now, almost.

Happy new year! Eventually I’ll post about  some other things.

Hi you guys! Look it’s December! How did that happen??

So my laptop died and then I got a new one (thanks, Black Friday internet sales on Thanksgiving), and haven’t been doing much house stuff thanks to this little jerk:

I’m dying to paint the upstairs stairway area or to take down the hidden secret wallpaper underneath the crappy paint in the guest room, but this guy can’t be left alone for a second. The last thing that needs to happen is for him to get into a bucket of paint or eat a mouthful of lead paint covered wallpaper.

Anyway, so we got some Christmas lights up. Next up is getting a tree, which we were going to do today but Alex came home late and then we put up lights instead. We don’t have a big ladder so we can’t put up serious lights like our neighbors do, but leave us alone we’ve only lived here six months. Six months!

I’ll post pictures of the tree when we get it up, and then some new sweet thrifty finds I’ve picked up in the last few months eventually. See ya!

PS look at Puff standing all proudly on the front steps.

First, we came back from Europe. Second, Alex got a big promotion at work. Third, we got this cute little puppy* (omg omg omg). Fourth, we had a big winter storm (in October?!) and Halloween was cancelled.

We lost our canopy for our little yard house, because we weren’t prepared for this storm at all (I laughed at everyone who said it was going to snow a foot in October). Oh well, now we will be creative and build a replacement next year!!

We made a snowman and a snowdog because it was the perfect heavy, wet snow for doing such. It was also the perfect heavy wet snow to leave us without power for three days. Three cold, long, cold, dark days.

Alex made a snow dog, but then Fritz (the puppy) ate his head. Anyway, I just wanted to say hi, and we made it through the storm, and coming up are some eventual posts about new furniture additions that I haven’t gotten around to posting about. Hope you all have power!

*Love him? He’s and English Setter, 12 weeks, and two of his brothers are still at the shelter. Go adopt them!

So I bought this funny thing at Goodwill today. It’s a ceramic shark head. There is a little hole in its’ nose, and its’ hollow inside, but solid on the bottom. Shark head is about six or seven inches high.

What would you do with this? Plant a little plant in it? Use it for a vase? Put it next to the sink to hold your toothbrushes? Use it as a salt pig? Mount it on the wall somehow? Help!!

Remember the sad bright yellow hallway we have upstairs that I spruced up with a giant mirror? I decided the other day to paint it. Alex and I banged it out in a day and a half, then I finally hung paintings! I haven’t allowed myself to hang paintings until we finish the walls in each room, so help keep myself motivated.

I like the color of the living room so much that I decided to continue it upstairs in the hallway and the top of the stairs. It’s a great neutral, pretty grey.

See? I like it so much more than the bright, stupid yellow. I might someday decide to put a chair rail along the walls, but that is just an idea.

Here is the other end. See our gross floor? I hate it. Someday we will take it up, or else paint it if taking it up is too ridiculous of a project. Gross brown tiles. But look how nice the walls look! That picture at the end is of my mom and her sisters and brothers. I’ll take a picture of it sometime when it’s daylight.

I hung some silly flower pictures on the walls. These ones I made from some fabric I got from someone once a long time ago, I bought some canvas frames and used my trusty staple gun to tack the fabric to the edges. I love these, but they do tend to collect animal hairs. Those jerks.

This great flower painting was rescued from the side of the road a few years ago in Philly. My dog was getting ready to pee on it, and I rescued it and cleaned it and have been enjoying it’s silliness every since. It’s a real painting, brush strokes and all. I love it.

Alex and I are going to Europe soon, when we come back we will paint some more upstairs and maybe take on some big project like tearing up the upstairs floor or the kitchen! Hooray.